Telzey smote her forehead.
“Forgot all about that!” she admitted, fishing the sportscar’s keys out of the pocket of her sunbriefs. “They’re out on the parking platform . . .”
* * *
The preliminary treaty arrangements between the Federation of the Hub and the new Affiliated Species of the Planet of Jontarou were formally ratified two weeks later, the ceremony taking place on Jontarou, in the Champagne Hall of the Shikaris’ Club.
Telzey was able to follow the event only by news viewer in her ship-cabin, she and Halet being on the return trip to Orado by then. She wasn’t too interested in the treaty’s details—they conformed almost exactly to what she had read out to Iron Thoughts and his co-chiefs and companions in the park. It was the smooth bridging of the wide language gap between the contracting parties by a row of interpreting machines and a handful of human xenotelepaths which held her attention.
As she switched off the viewer, Halet came wandering in from the adjoining cabin.
“I was watching it, too!” Halet observed. She smiled. “I was hoping to see dear Tick-Tock.”
Telzey looked over at her. “Well, TT would hardly be likely to show up in Port Nichay,” she said. “She’s having too good a time now finding out what life in the Baluit range is like.”
“I suppose so,” Halet agreed doubtfully, sitting down on a hassock. “But I’m glad she promised to get in touch with us again in a few years. I’ll miss her.”
Telzey regarded her aunt with a reflective frown. Halet meant it quite sincerely, of course; she had undergone a profound change of heart during the past two weeks. But Telzey wasn’t without some doubts about the actual value of a change of heart brought on by telepathic means. The learning process the crest cats had started in her mind appeared to have continued automatically several days longer than her rugged teachers had really intended; and Telzey had reason to believe that by the end of that time she’d developed associated latent abilities of which the crest cats had never heard. She’d barely begun to get it all sorted out yet, but . . . as an example . . . she’d found it remarkably easy to turn Halet’s more obnoxious attitudes virtually upside down. It had taken her a couple of days to get the hang of her aunt’s personal symbolism, but after that there had been no problem.
She was reasonably certain she’d broken no laws so far, though the sections in the law library covering the use and abuse of psionic abilities were veiled in such intricate and downright obscuring phrasing—deliberately, Telzey suspected—that it was really difficult to say what they did mean. But even aside from that, there were a number of arguments in favor of exercising great caution.
Jessamine, for one thing, was bound to start worrying about her sister-in-law’s health if Halet turned up on Orado in her present state of mind, even though it would make for a far more agreeable atmosphere in the Amberdon household.
“Halet,” Telzey inquired mentally, “do you remember what an all-out stinker you used to be?”
“Of course, dear,” Halet said aloud. “I can hardly wait to tell dear Jessamine how much I regret the many times I . . .”
“Well,” Telzey went on, still verbalizing it silently, “I think you’d really enjoy life more if you were, let’s say, about halfway between your old nasty self and the sort of sickening-good kind you are now.”
“Why, Telzey!” Halet cried out with dopey amiability. “What a delightful idea!”
“Let’s try it,” Telzey said.
There was silence in the cabin for some twenty minutes then, while she went painstakingly about remolding a number of Halet’s character traits for the second time. She still felt some misgiving about it; but if it became necessary, she probably could always restore the old Halet in toto.
These, she told herself, definitely were powers one should treat with respect! Better rattle through law school first; then, with that out of the way, she could start hunting around to see who in the Federation was qualified to instruct a genius-level novice in the proper handling of psionics . . .
II: Undercurrents
Chapter 1
At the Orado City Space Terminal, the Customs and Public Health machine was smoothly checking through passengers disembarking from a liner from Jontarou. A psionic computer of awesome dimensions, the machine formed one side of a great hall along which the stream of travelers moved towards the city exits and their previously cleared luggage. Unseen behind the base of the wall—armored, as were the housings of all Federation psionic machines in public use—its technicians sat in rows of cubicles, eyes fixed on dials and indicators, hands ready to throw pinpointing switches at the quiver of a blip.
The computer’s sensors were simultaneously searching for contraband and dutiable articles, and confirming the medical clearance given passengers before an interstellar ship reached Orado’s atmosphere. Suggestions of inimical or unregistered organisms, dormant or active, would be a signal to quarantine attendants at the end of the slideways to shepherd somebody politely to a detention ward for further examination. Customs agents were waiting for the other type of signal.
It was a dependable, unobtrusive procedure, causing no unnecessary inconvenience or delay, and so generally established now at major spaceports in the Federation of the Hub that sophisticated travelers simply took it for granted. However, the machine had features of which neither Customs nor Health were aware. In a room across the spaceport, two men sat watchfully before another set of instruments connected to the computer’s scanners. Above these instruments was a wide teleview of the Customs hall. Nothing appeared to be happening in the room until approximately a third of the passengers from Jontarou had moved through the computer’s field. Then the instruments were suddenly active, and a personality identification chart popped out of a table slot before the man on the left.
He glanced at the chart, said, “Telzey Amberdon. It’s our pigeon. Fix on her!”
The man on the right grunted, eyes on the screen where the teleview pickup had shifted abruptly to a point a few yards ahead of and above a girl who had just walked into the hall. Smartly dressed and carrying a small handbag, she was a slim and dewy teenager, tanned, blue-eyed, and brown-haired. As the pickup began to move along the slideway with her, the man on the right closed a switch, placed his hand on a plunger.
Simultaneously, two things occurred in the hall. Along the ceiling a string of nearly microscopic ports opened, extruding needle paralyzers pointed at the girl; and one of the floating ambulances moored tactfully out of sight near the exits rose, shifted forward twenty feet and stopped again. If the girl collapsed, she would be on her way out of the hall in a matter of seconds, the event almost unnoticed except by the passengers nearest her.
“If you want her, we have her,” said the man on the right.
“We’ll see.” The first observer slipped the identification chart into one of his instruments, and slowly depressed a calibrated stud, watching the girl’s face in the teleview.
Surprise briefly widened her eyes; then her expression changed to sharp interest. After a moment, the observer experienced a sense of question in himself, an alert, searching feeling.
Words abruptly formed in his mind.
“Is somebody there? Did somebody speak just now?”
The man on the right grinned.
“A lamb!”
“Maybe.” The first observer looked thoughtful. “Don’t relax just yet. The response was Class Two.”
He waited while the sense of question lingered, strengthened for a few seconds, then faded. He selected a second stud on the instrument, edged it down.
This time, the girl’s mobile features showed no reaction, and nothing touched his mind. The observer shifted his eyes to a dial pointer, upright and unmoving before him, watched it while a minute ticked past, released the stud. Sliding the identification pattern chart out of the instrument, he checked over the new factors coded into it, and returned it to the table slot.
Forty-two miles off in Orado City, in the headquarters complex of the Federation’s Psychology Service, another slot opened, and a copy of the chart slid out on a desk. Somebody picked it up.
“Hooked and tagged and never knew it,” the first observer was remarking. “You can call off the fix.” He added, “Fifteen years old. She was spotted for the first time two weeks ago. . . .”
In the Customs hall the tiny ports along the ceiling sealed themselves and the waiting ambulance slid slowly back to its mooring points.
* * *
The visiting high Federation official was speaking in guardedly even tones.
“I, as has everyone else,” he said, “have been led to believe that the inspection machines provided by the Psychology Service for Health and Customs respected the anonymity of the public.”